Open and Shut?: The OA Interviews: Alison Mudditt, Director, University of California Press

" ... The University of California Press made its move in January, launching two new open access programmes—Collabra and Luminos.  Collabra is a mega journal that will initially focus on three broad disciplinary areas (life and biomedical sciences, ecology and environmental science, and social and behavioural sciences), and then expand into other disciplines at a later date. Collabra is expected to publish its first articles in the next month or so. Luminos is an open access monograph publisher that will publish its first book this autumn. What is the context in which UC Press’ move needs to be seen? ... So what is UC Press bringing to the party? Essentially, while embracing the two primary author-side payment models, the Press has introduced some interesting innovations. Let’s describe its approach therefore as variations on a theme.  The first point to make is that as a non-profit publisher subsidised by its host university, and with its own foundation, UC Press has been able to set Collabra’s APC at $875. This is not only significantly lower than what commercial publishers charge, but considerably lower than PLOS ONE, the pioneering mega journal launched by non-profit publisher Public Library of Science in 2006. PLOS ONE charges $1,350 per paper.  Moreover, only $625 of this fee will go to Collabra, with $250 being pooled in what the publisher calls a 'Research Community Fund'. This fund is then used to pay editors and reviewers a fee for their services ... The same community-focussed approach is also inherent to the Luminos model. While its publication fee ($15,000) is comparable to that charged by other publishers, UC Press will subsidise the fee through a library membership scheme(research libraries are being asked to pay an annual fee of $1,000 ... And in a similar collaborative spirit, UC Press is working with the California Digital Library (courtesy of a $750,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation) to develop a web-based open-source content management system to support the publication of open access monographs in the humanities and social sciences. When complete, the system will be made available to the wider community of academic publishers, especially university presses and library publishers ..."